JULY + AUGUST 2012
1131 HOWE STREET • VANCOUVER
cinematheque.bc .ca
It ,s our th
40
Birthday!
UNIVERSAL PICTU URES
and
Abigail Child
www.vlaff.org
ADMIN ISTRATIVE O F F I C E 200 – 1131 Howe Street Vancouver, BC V6Z 2L7 tel 604.688.8202 • fax 604.688.8204 Email: info@cinematheque.bc.ca Web: www.cinematheque.bc.ca
Experience Essential Cinema
contents
STAF F Executive and Artistic Director: Jim Sinclair Managing Director: Amber Orchard Communications Manager: steve chow Education Manager: Liz Schulze Operations & Marketing Coordinator: Kate Wilkins Media Production Coordinator: Mitch Stookey Facility Manager: Sue Cormier Assistant Theatre Managers: Sharon Cohen, Lora Haber, Ann-Mary Mullen, Dawna Brown, Nadiya Chettiar, Jessica Parsons, David Emery, Andrea Oberdieck Head Projectionist: Al Reid Relief Projectionists: Peter Boyle, Stuart Carl, Ron Lacheur, Cassidy Penner
Pa cific Cin é ma thè q u e Pro g ram Gu id e, v35. 6
J U L Y + A UG U S T 2 0 12
CINEMA SUNDAY p.4
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm The Iron Giant Pacific Cinémathèque Celebrates 40 Years of Essential Cinema p.5
BOARD OF DIRECTO RS President: Mark Ostry Vice-President: Eleni Kassaris Secretary: Mark Tomek Treasurer: Wynford Owen Members: Jim Bindon, Luca Citton, Kim Guise, Moshe Mastai, Kathy Wang V O LUNTEERS Theatre Volunteers: Mike Archibald, Jason Barker, Michael Begg, Mark Beley, Eileen Brosnan, Jeremy Buhler, Nishant Chadha, Emily Chia, Andrew Clark, Jessica Clarke, Adam Cook, Rob Danielson, Ben Daswani, Steve Devereux, Ray Don, Ryan Ermacora, Chantelle Gates, Paul Griffiths, Joe Haigh, Dora Ho, Brad Iles, Krisandra Janowicz, Michiko Higgins-Kato, Beng Khoo, Michael Kling, Ray Lai, Shannon Lentz, Liam McClure, Brittany McDuff, Vit Mlcoch, Kelley Montgomery, Danuta Musial, Kailash Ragupathy, Duncan Ranslem, Chahram Riazi, Marc Ronnie, Hisayo Saito, Alexis Sogl, Derek Thomas, Amanda Thomson, Stephen Tweedale, Diane Wood, Nathalie Zeoli Distribution: Martin Lohmann, Harry Wong, John William, Michael Edillor, Chantal Cooke, Hazel Ackner, Lynn Martin, Michael Demers, Scott Banakaiff, Anna Xijing, Sheila Adams, Magdalena Haussmann Roman Goldman Office: Jo Bergstrand, Betty-Lou Phillips, Zac Cocciolo, Moya Hilliam, Shaun Inoyue, Ratna Dhaliwal Education: Michael Edillor, Wesley Houston, Chloe McKnight, Nick McLean, Pat McSherry, Jennifer Somerstein, Michael van den Bos, Matthew Vatta, Donna Welstein And a special thanks to all our spares! PACIFIC C IN É MAT H È Q U E PR O G RAM G U I D E Art Direction + Graphic Design: steve chow Program Notes: Jim Sinclair Advertising + Additional Ad Design: Kate Wilkins Proofreading: Amber Orchard Published six times a year with a bi-monthly circulation of 15,000. Printed by Van Press Printers. ADVE RTISIN G To advertise in this Program Guide or in our theatre before screenings, please call 604.688.8202. Pacific Cinémathèque is a not-for-profit arts society. We rely on financial support from public and private sources. Donations are gratefully accepted — a tax receipt will be issued for all donations of $30 or more. To make a donation or for more information, please call our administration office at 604.688.8202. Pacific Cinémathèque gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the following agencies:
10 YEARS OF FRAMES OF MIND p.6
Hey, Where’s the Noir? A NOTE ON SUMMER PROGRAMMING Our annual film noir summer series is taking a sabbatical in 2012, but only to be replaced by yet more murder, mayhem, menace, moral chaos, metaphysical anxiety, and monstrous evil — in the Hitchcockian mode. In fact, there’s enough crime, corruption, cynicism, suspense, fatalism, existential despair, romantic obsession, perverse sexuality, misguided misogyny, Kafkaesque nightmarishness, and stunningly stylish mise-en-scène lurking in that celebrated Hitchcock silhouette to satisfy even the most hardcore noir devotee. And for those truly enamoured of pitiless views of human relations and human desperation, may we also suggest the very different flavours of the remarkably rich, startlingly creative cinema of the late, great New German Cinema master (and Hitchcock admirer) Rainer Werner Fassbinder, also featured prominently on this season’s menu. Have a great summer!
Elling Momma’s Man
DIM CINEMA p.7
FASTWURMS: Mash//Up Abigail Child: What We Desire THE LATE GREAT
RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER (1945 -1982) 17 Films
p.8
Now Playing Calendar p.12-13 DIRECTED BY
ALFRED HITCHCOCK
The Complete Works for Television, Two French Rarities, and Nine Sensational Masterpieces p.14
UNIVERSAL PICTURES Celebrating 100 Years p.19
Presented by Pacific Cinémathèque’s Education Department, Cinema Sunday is an afternoon film program for children and their families. We invite you to join us every month to watch outstanding movies and take part in follow-up discussions, activities, and games intended to be fun and stimulate critical and creative thinking. Our goal is to introduce you to some awesome new films, treasured classics, and other favourites — movies that keep you thinking and talking long after you leave the theatre. We hope you’ll join us and make Cinema Sunday a regular addition to your family outings!
PACIFIC CINÉMATHÈQUE MEMBERSHIP IS NOT REQUIRED FOR THESE EVENTS.
USA 1993. Directors: Eric Radomski, Bruce W. Timm Voices: Kevin Conroy, Dana Delany, Hart Bochner, Mark Hamill, Stacy Keach
Batman :
Mask of the
ALL AGES WELCOME
Phantasm
Much like the latest Dark Knight franchise emerging this summer, the animated Mask of the Phantasm finds Batman on the run from police and Gotham’s gangsters, wrongfully blamed for a crime he didn’t commit. Mistaken for the Phantasm, a sinister figure who is systematically knocking out the city’s mob leaders, Batman’s situation is further complicated by the return of a past flame, whose disappearance years earlier led him to commit to his alter ego and role as a defender of justice. Full of thrilling twists and turns, this imaginative mystery reveals new secrets about Batman’s past as he struggles to unmask the Phantasm and clear his own name. Set in the 1940s, Mask of the Phantasm evokes strong elements of film noir and “is stylishly dark in the manner of the Tim Burton Batman films and the graphic novels of the late ‘80s … The high pitch of the drama, the earnest quality of its characters, and a deafening score combine for a fun, fatal romp”(Leonard Klady, Variety). Colour, DVD. 76 mins. SUNDAY, JULY 15 – 1:00 PM
The
Iron Giant USA 1999. Directors: Brad Bird Voices: Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick Jr., Vin Diesel, Eli Marienthal, Cloris Leachman
A wild and fascinatin fascinating animated adventure set in small-town, Cold WarIron Giant was the first feature by Brad Bird, director era America, A erica, The Iro Am of the Pixar hits The Incredibles and Ratatouille. While the rest of the country is watching the skies to catch a glimpse of the Russian satellite t Sputnik, nine-year-old Hogarth, a lonely boy with a wild imagination, has a remarkable encounter encounte with another celestial voyager when a gigantic robot from outer space crash-lands near his home! Hogarth finds an unlikely best cras friend in this fifty-feet-tall alien machine (voiced by Vin Diesel), despite the fty-feet robot’s appetite for cars, railroad tracks, and TV antennae. But Hogarth must keep his new companion a secret, or risk losing him forever to the c fear and paranoia of the grown-up world. A touching tale of friendship and understanding, based on a 1968 children’s book by future British poet laureate Ted Hughes, The Iron Giant “is not just a cute romp but H an involving story that tha has something to say” (Roger Ebert, Chicago SunTimes). Colour, DVD. 86 mins. D SUNDAY, SUNDA AUGUST 19 – 1:00 PM ALL AGES WELCOME
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40 Pacific Cinémathèque celebrates
years of essential cinema
august 2nd 2012
HITCHCOCK FOR A DOLLAR!
See Alfred Hitchcock`s classic thriller North by Northwest (p. 18) — at 1972 pricing! Admissions to this screening will be just $1! Cash sales only, doors open to the public at 6:30pm, seating is limited.
november 15th 2012 SCENE: CELEBRATING 40 YEARS OF ESSENTIAL CINEMA
A gala fundraiser at Studio 700, CBC Building. For ticket info, call 604.688.8202.
mid-november 2012 40TH ANNIVERSARY MOVIE MARATHON PLUS: A historical exhibit, a new t-shirt, a totebag, and special 40th anniversary programming.
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10 YEARS OF
presented by PACIFIC CINÉMATHÈQUE and the INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH, UBC DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHIATRY Pacific Cinémathèque is pleased to join with the Institute of Mental Health, UBC Department of Psychiatry in presenting “Frames of Mind,” a monthly event utilizing film and video to promote professional and community education on issues pertaining to mental health and illness. Screenings, accompanied by presentations and audience discussions, are held on the third Wednesday of each month.
Elling
Series directed by DR. HARRY KARLINSKY, Director of Public Education, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. Programmed by CAROLINE COUTTS, film curator, filmmaker, and programmer of “Frames of Mind” since its inception in September 2002.
Frames of Mind began its 10th year last September. We’ve been celebrating with a year-long retrospective of some of the most memorable films screened in the series since its inception in 2002. This program’s selections are Elling, first presented at Frames in May 2004, and Momma’s Man, first presented in January 2009. FRAMESOFMIND.CA
Norway 2001. Director: Petter Naess Cast: Per Christian Ellefsen, Sven Nordin, Per Christensen, Jorgen Langhelle, Marit Pia Jacobsen
Momma’s Man USA 2008. Director: Azazel Jacobs Cast: Matt Boren, Ken Jacobs, Flo Jacobs, Dana Varon, Richard Edson, Piero Arcilesi
A foreign-film Oscar nominee in 2002, and one of Norway’s highest grossing movies of all time, Elling is a winning Odd Couple comedy with an interesting twist: Felix and Oscar’s Norse counterparts are both outpatients from a state-run mental health facility. Deeply neurotic, 40-year-old Elling (Per Christian Ellefsen) is sent to the facility after his mother’s death. His roommate there is Kjell Bjarne (Sven Nordin), a lumbering gentle giant with two things on his mind: food and sex — despite the fact he’s still a virgin at age 40. After two years of peaceful cohabitation, the unthinkable happens: Elling and Kjell Bjarne are deemed fit to rejoin the world at large, and are set up in a state-funded apartment in Oslo. For the first time in their lives, they’re expected to take care of themselves, but even the smallest tasks, like answering the phone, prove terrifying. As the two become accustomed to life on their own, their friendship is strained when Kjell Bjarne falls in love with the pregnant single woman upstairs. Laugh-out-loud funny, Elling deftly manages to avoid many of the condescending stereotypes that so often plague films about the mentally ill. “Genuinely moving … Elling is guaranteed to leave you feeling happy, spiritually cleansed, and with a strange yearning to go to Norway” (Tim Smedley, kamera.co.uk). Colour, 35mm, 89 mins. Post-screening discussion with Dr. Peter Gibson, Head, Department of Psychiatry, Richmond Hospital; Medical Director, Mental Health & Addictions, Richmond; and Associate Clinical Professor, UBC Department of Psychiatry. Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. WEDNESDAY, JULY 18 – 7:30 PM
The idea for Momma’s Man came to director Azazel Jacobs one morning on a visit to his parents. Waking up to find coffee and cereal waiting for him, Jacobs wondered then why he had ever moved out. His film revolves around the childhood regression of Mikey (Matt Boren), a thirtysomething computer programmer with a wife and baby. Jacobs, merging his own life into the fiction, casts his real parents — Ken Jacobs, the noted avant-garde filmmaker, and Flo Jacobs, a painter — in the roles of Mikey’s parents, and shoots the film in the crammed-to-the-rafters Manhattan loft where Ken and Flo have lived for decades. Momma’s Man opens with Mikey heading to the airport to fly home after a visit with his folks. But he soon returns, citing a flight delay. The next day brings another excuse, and then another. His doting mother is more than happy to enable his procrastination; his father is increasingly suspicious. Mikey, retreating to his old bedroom, reads comic books, plays the guitar, and wanders about in his long underwear like an overgrown toddler. “Momma’s Man sneaks up on you — small in scale, constructed from deeply personal material — you’d never guess how deeply it cuts into a universal experience: the terror of becoming an adult” (David Ansen, Newsweek). “A beautiful, wise and poker-faced comedy of discombobulation” (Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly). Colour, Blu-ray Disc. 94 mins. Post-screening discussion with Dr. Endre Koritar. Dr. Koritar is chair of the Extension Program Committee and is involved in the development of psychotherapy courses and study groups for the Western Branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. He is also the Medical Stream Lead for the Wellness Program at the Vancouver General Hospital Psychiatry Outpatient Department. Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. Co-sponsored by the Western Branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15 – 7:30 PM
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A MONTHLY EVENING OF MOVING-IMAGE ART AND CINEMATIC EXPERIMENTS DIM presents Canadian and international artists and their moving-image practices in dialogue with cinema. DIM is curated by Amy Lynn Kazymerchyk, a Vancouver filmmaker, writer, and curator. Amy is the Coordinator of Events + Exhibitions at VIVO Media Arts Centre and Curator of the Signal + Noise Media Arts Festival.
WWW.DIMCINEMA.CA
FASTWURMS:
Mash//Up PROGRAMMED BY HEIDI NAGTEGAAL
MASH//UP is a look at the last 15 years of video art produced by FASTWURMS, the trademark and shared authorship of Canadian artists Dai Skuse and Kim Kozzi. Since 1979, the multidisciplinary artists have worked with media, social, and material art forms in a practice that melds high and popular cultures, bent identity politics, social exchange, and do-it-yourself sensibility. FASTWURMS practice looks closely at the things we cannot see — or refuse to see. FASTWURMS creates a panoply of camp performance, costumes, ceremony, Wiccan ritual, collage, installation, cats, dance music, and cheap video production to make visible commonly held taboos around sexuality, desire, cosmology, nature, power, and the occult. FASTWURMS uses video to create art as well as document their lives as activistartist-witch-educators. They extend authentic ardour and radical generosity to working class, queer, unschooled, de-schooled, and over-schooled communities. They have dedicated over 25 years to co-authored, activist art making — an example of life as practice. Dai Skuse and Kim Kozzi, aka FASTWURMS, also teach in the sculpture department at the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Plug In ICA, Winnipeg; and the Art Gallery of York University, Toronto. Group shows include Anthem: Perspectives on Home and Native Land, MSVU Art Gallery, Halifax; and The Banff Centre Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff; São Paulo Biennial, Brazil; and Sequences Festival, Reykjavik, Iceland. Vulcano! | Canada 1987. 16mm, 9 mins. Red of Tooth and Klaw | Canada 2001. DV, 20 mins. Denim Pox | Canada 2002. DV, 5 mins. Telepathacats| Canada 2003. DV, 12 mins. Into Trees | Canada 2003. DV, 2 mins. Push It Good (Part 3) | Canada 2003. DV, 3 mins W.A.D.D. | Canada 2003. DV, 2 mins. Blood Clock | Canada 2005. DV, 12 mins.
AbigailChild:
WHAT WE DESIRE In her vast and compelling oeuvre, media artist and poet Abigail Child has created three unique films that speak to women’s political, sexual, and economic experiences on the streets of New York. Mutiny (1983) is a panoply of expression and gesture. It’s a collage of women: at home, on the street, at the workplace, and at school — talking, singing, dancing, and playing the violin. Mutiny belongs to a series of montage films, entitled Is this what you were born for?, in which Child conducts an archaeological dig through the miasma of images and expectations we are born into. In Game (1972), an intimate portrait of a couple, Child’s compassion, generosity, and fearlessness nurture a complex conversation on civil rights, sexual politics, prison justice, love, and economics that reveals the real game within American culture. B/side (1996) is a poetic rumination on urban homelessness. Framed by footage of the encampment locally known as Dinkinsville on New York’s Lower East Side, B/ side is composed of sensitive vérité footage of the site’s external conditions and intimate vignettes of women’s interior fantasies. Abigail Child is a media artist and writer whose original montage pushes the envelope of sound-image relations. Her work in the 1980s explored gender and strategies for rewriting narrative. In the 1990s she recuperated documentary to poetically explore public space. In the 21st century, her films investigate the awkward drama of everyday, often utilizing archival material to examine the past. Child has also turned her vertical montage to installation, creating prismatic and interruptive multiple screen narratives at galleries across the world. Harvard has created an Abigail Child Collection dedicated to preserving and exhibiting her work. Mutiny | USA 1983. Colour and B&W, 16mm. 10 mins. Game | USA 1972. B&W, 16mm. 40 mins. B/side | USA 1996. Colour and B&W, 16mm. 40 mins. Total running time: 90 mins. MONDAY, AUGUST 20 – 7:30 PM
Total running time: approx. 65 minutes MONDAY, JULY 16 – 7:30 PM
“Movie images are dim reflections of the beauty and ferocity in mankind.”
JAMES BROUGHTON
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June marked the 30th anniversary of the untimely 1982 death of the great German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It has been 15 years since Pacific Cinémathèque presented a substantial retrospective of his work, much of which has remained unavailable or difficult to access in recent times. Fassbinder’s is a cinema, and a life, of staggering extremes, stunning productivity, unparalleled accomplishment. He was both wunderkind and enfant terrible of the New German Cinema, and perhaps its leading luminary. Certainly, with Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders, a part of its great triumvirate. Many place Fassbinder at the peak of an even higher summit: the most important filmmaker of the postwar period since Godard.
“WAS FASSBINDER CINEMA’S LAST GENIUS? CERTAINLY NO DIRECTOR SINCE HIS PREMATURE DEATH HAS PRODUCED SUCH A PRODIGIOUS BODY OF WORK.” JAMES QUANDT, CINEMATHEQUE ONTARIO Fassbinder was also, and not incidentally, a bad-boy, a rebel, a black-leather-jacketed artist-thug. Openly, defiantly gay, in an era when such a public stance was unusual, a provocation. Notoriously abusive and sadistic as a director, yet inspiring great loyalty from an ensemble troupe of actors who worked with him time and again. Above all, he was phenomenally tireless, a non-stop workaholic, a indefatigable dynamo, a shooting star who burned oh-so-brightly and then burned out — from an eventually-fatal diet of booze, cocaine, and pills. He died suddenly at the age of 37. Fassbinder’s meteoric filmmaking career really lasts only a dozen or so years: from 1969, when he directed his first feature, to 1982, the year of his premature but perhaps predictable death. In that time, he directed no fewer than 40 — forty! — feature-length works for the cinema and television. One of those, Berlin Alexanderplatz, was itself 15 hours long. In 1970 alone, he directed seven features. During the same period, he also worked extensively as a writer and director for the theatre and radio, and appeared as an actor in some 40 films, his own and others. It defies belief that any filmmaker could produce such an output, sustain such a workload, ever again.
“FASSBINDER’S OEUVRE IS BOTH ONE OF THE GREATEST AND ONE OF THE LARGEST IN MODERN CINEMA, AND MUCH OF IT REMAINS SHOCKINGLY UNAVAILABLE.” RICHARD BRODY, THE NEW YORKER Fassbinder’s cinema is a cinema of the outsider, the unloved, the cruelly loved. A cinema offering a pitiless — but often bleakly comic — view of human relations, of the dynamics of power, of humanity’s desperate desire to be loved. And offering a stinging social critique of postwar West Germany and its so-called “Economic Miracle,” of the soulless consumer capitalism that left behind or trampled into the dust those Fassbinder championed: immigrant workers, exploited women, homosexuals, the underclass.
“THE MOST DAZZLING, TALENTED, PROVOCATIVE, ORIGINAL, PUZZLING, PROLIFIC, AND EXHILARATING FILMMAKER OF HIS GENERATION.” VINCENT CANBY, NEW YORK TIMES His early features — Love Is Colder Than Death (1969), Gods of the Plague (1969), The American Soldier (1970) — were quick, radical, New Wave-like works of “counter-cinema,” very much influenced by Brecht and Godard, and sharing the latter’s love of American B-movies. In the early 1970s, after discovering the sumptuous Hollywood films of German expatriate Douglas Sirk, Fassbinder moved towards a more popular, more accessible form of filmmaking, creating highly stylized, extravagant, melodramatic works which, like Sirk’s subversive weepies, offered sly critiques of the status quo. Including The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971) and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1973), it was these that brought Fassbinder his greatest critical and commercial triumphs, culminating in the breakthrough international art-house success of The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978). A delirious string of masterstrokes, including Lola (1981) and Veronika Voss (1982), followed, before Fassbinder’s career and life would abruptly end, on June 10, 1982.
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The Marriage of Maria Braun
Love Is Colder Than Death
West Germany 1978. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Hanna Schygulla, Klaus Löwitsch, Ivan Desny, Gottfried John, Günter Lamprecht
West Germany 1969. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Hanna Schygulla, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ulli Lommel, Hans Hirschmüller, Peter Berling
“A work of genius” (Jay Scott, Globe and Mail), the marvellous Marriage of Maria Braun is Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s most famous film and was his greatest popular success. It also exemplifies his clever, cunning use of conventional melodrama — derived from Hollywood films in general, and those of Douglas Sirk in particular — as a vehicle for critiquing the social and political state of post-World War II Germany. The sprawling soap opera plot concerns a young German woman who marries near the end of the war, only to lose her husband at the Russian front. Reduced to dire poverty in the war’s rubble-strewn aftermath, she improves her fortunes by taking up with an American soldier, but things take a deadly turn when her husband unexpectedly returns. The postwar rags-to-riches tale of the eponymous heroine is meant to parallel West Germany’s so-called “Economic Miracle.” Hanna Schygulla’s towering, sexually-charged performance in the title role drew comparisons to Marlene Dietrich, and earned Schygulla the best actress award at Berlin in 1979. “Schygulla is the luminous focus of the film’s beauty and scathing intelligence; the movie is unimaginable without her” (Richard T. Jameson). Colour, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 120 mins.
Love Is Colder Than Death was Fassbinder’s first feature — and is therefore one of the most important debuts in the history of cinema! Its title also aptly summarizes one of the major themes of his prolific career. Very much of the director’s early gangster/Godard period, the film has Fassbinder himself as Franz, a small-time pimp who refuses to join a crime syndicate. Ulli Lommel is Bruno, the dangerous thug sent to change Franz’s mind — and whom Franz loves. Fassbinder diva Hanna Schygulla is Joanna, Franz’s hooker girlfriend. A nasty series of betrayals and double-crosses ensues as the B-movie plot plays itself out; occasional interludes of tour-de-force comedy and tongue-in-cheek genre send-up serve to lighten what is otherwise a darkly pessimistic, emotionally detached study of another key Fassbinder concern: “characters as victims of an impersonal, alienated society, who blindly, often violently, lash out, defending themselves as best they can against forces beyond their control” (Anna Kuhn). Dedicated to “Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Marie Straub, Linio and Cuncho” (the latter two are misspellings of characters in Quien Sabe?, a 1966 spaghetti western by Damiano Damiani), Love Is Colder met with a hostile reception at the 1969 Berlin fest, where Fassbinder was booed. Dissenters championed it as a debut of Breathless-like proportions. B&W, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 88 mins.
(Die Ehe der Maria Braun)
SUNDAY, JULY 1 – 4:00 PM MONDAY, JULY 2 – 8:15 PM WEDNESDAY, JULY 4 – 8:15 PM FRIDAY, JULY 6 – 6:30 PM
DOUGLAS SIRK’S
All that Heaven Allows
USA 1955. Director: Douglas Sirk Cast: Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead, Conrad Nagel, Virginia Grey
Douglas Sirk’s glossy, glorious melodramas of the 1950s were a huge influence on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s cinema. This 1955 tearjerker, starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson, was remade by Fassbinder in 1973 as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul; Todd Haynes, a devotee of both Sirk and Fassbinder, fashioned his own masterful remake in 2002’s Far from Heaven. Wyman plays a lonely, middle-class, middle-aged widow whose love affair with her younger, “bohemian” gardener, played by Hudson, scandalizes her class-conscious family and friends. In one of the film’s most famous (and unnerving) scenes, her grown-up children, having persuaded her to ditch the inappropriate beau, attempt to placate her with a new television set instead. All That Heaven Allows is brilliantly shot by cinematographer Russell Metty in gorgeous Expressionistic colours and elaborate compositions that further the subversive Sirk agenda; beneath the slick melodramatic surface, this is a devastating portrait of middle-class American shallowness, snobbishness, and intolerance, and of a woman trapped by repressive bourgeois mores. Wyman and Hudson were also the principals of Magnificent Obsession, Sirk’s blockbuster success of the year before. “A masterpiece by one of the most inventive and recondite directors ever to work in Hollywood” (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader). Colour, 35mm. 89 mins. SUNDAY, JULY 1 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, JULY 2 – 4:30 PM
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf)
West Germany 1973. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin, Irm Hermann, Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Fassbinder’s “racy” reworking of Douglas Sirk’s Hollywood melodrama All That Heaven Allows (also screening July 1 & 2) won the International Critics’ Prize at Cannes in 1974, and remains one of the director’s most celebrated films. Beautifully stylized in the Sirkian manner, and scathing in its critique of German social and political values, Fear Eats the Soul has Emmi (Brigitte Mira), a widowed cleaning woman and ex-Nazi, falling in love with Ali (El Hedi ben Salem), an Arab immigrant worker twenty years her junior. The two are drawn to each other because of shared loneliness — because, as Emmi says, “No-one can live without other people” — but their romance meets with outright hostility and racism from family and friends, and they must also face the very real age and cultural differences between them. The film marked Fassbinder’s big breakthrough with foreign critics; he began to be championed by the likes of Vincent Canby of the New York Times, among others, as “the most original talent since Godard.” “A masterpiece ... not to be missed” (Andrew Sarris). Colour, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 93 mins. SUNDAY, JULY 1 – 8:15 PM MONDAY, JULY 2 – 6:30 PM FRIDAY, JULY 6 – 8:45 PM
(Liebe ist kälter als der Tod)
WEDNESDAY, JULY 4 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, JULY 9 – 8:50 PM
Fox and His Friends (Faustrecht der Freiheit)
West Germany 1974. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Chatel, Karlheinz Böhm, Rudolf Lenz, Adrian Hoven
“The most honest film I’ve made up to now... I think it’s incidental and beside the point that the story has to do with gays” (Fassbinder). Fassbinder cast himself in the lead of this merciless comedy of manners about a working-class homosexual who is ruthlessly manipulated by a group of upper-crust gays after he wins a small fortune in a lottery. Fox and His Friends has been called the male mirror image of the earlier Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant; its protagonist’s name, Franz Biberkopf, is lifted from the Alfred Döblin opus Berlin Alexanderplatz, which Fassbinder would later film as a 15-hour miniseries. The film’s chilly denouement is eerily prescient of the director’s own untimely demise. “A lacerating portrait of class exploitation and sadomasochism, Fox is one of Fassbinder’s finest” (James Quandt, Cinematheque Ontario). “A work of brilliant intelligence. And the director himself is superb as the none-too-intelligent hero” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). Colour, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 123 mins. MONDAY, JULY 9 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, JULY 11 – 8:50 PM
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant)
West Germany 1972. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Irm Hermann, Eva Mattes, Katrin Schaake
“A tragi-comic love story disguised as a lesbian slumber party in high camp drag” (Molly Haskell), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is one of Fassbinder’s most audacious and stylized films. Petra von Kant, a successful fashion designer who uses and abuses the love of her livein secretary and slave Marlene, finds the sadomasochistic tables turned when she enters into a humiliating relationship with Karin, a beautiful young model. Adapted from the director’s own theatre piece, the feverish film is set entirely within the hothouse confines of an absurdly extravagant apartment, decorated with white mannequins and an enormous Titian-like mural, and dominated by a brass bed. A prowling camera and stunning compositional groupings define and enclose the characters, while the odd dialogue and exaggerated acting heighten the sense of artificiality. The soundtrack combines Verdi and The Platters. The film has been variously described as “Fassbinder’s version of Death in Venice” (Reinhard Baumgard), “an unloving look at male power struggles in lesbian disguise” (Jay Scott, Globe and Mail), and “one of the great love stories of modern cinema” (NFT/London). Colour, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 124 mins. WEDNESDAY, JULY 11 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, JULY 15 – 8:30 PM
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The Merchant of Four Seasons
Chinese Roulette
West Germany 1971. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Hans Hirschmüller, Irm Hermann, Hanna Schygulla, Gusti Kreissl, Kurt Raab
West Germany/France 1976. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Anna Karina, Margit Carstensen, Ulli Lommel, Alexander Allerson, Andrea Schober
(Händler der vier Jahreszeiten)
“By consensus, Fassbinder’s masterpiece” (J. Hoberman, Village Voice), The Merchant of Four Seasons — the director’s 12th feature — was Fassbinder’s first commercial success and one of his most widely acclaimed works. Hailed at home as “the best German film since the war” and “the most important German film in years,” it is often cited as the work which marks the real emergence of the celebrated Fassbinder style; Fassbinder, whose early films reveal the influence of Godard, Brecht, and Jean-Marie Straub, had only just discovered the subversive Hollywood melodramas of Douglas Sirk, a major inspiration for the rest of his illustrious and prolific career. Offering a merciless depiction of petit bourgeois life in the guise of a family melodrama, Merchant stars Hans Hirschmüller as an ex-Foreign Legionnaire who is ostracized by his middle-class family when he abandons his long-cherished dream of becoming an engineer and becomes instead a lowly fruit-and-vegetable peddler. He is welcomed back into the fold when his business starts doing well, but his chronic unhappiness only increases as he becomes more successful. “The most exquisite achievement in German cinema to reach these shores since the Golden Age of Murnau, Lang, Pabst et al” (Andrew Sarris). Colour, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 89 mins.
“Fassbinder’s most enigmatic film” (Anna Kuhn), Chinese Roulette offers a kinky, cruel, and coolly formalist variation on Renoir’s Rules of the Game. The plot has a philandering married couple and their respective lovers who are unwittingly brought together for a weekend in a country chateau. The embarrassing situation has been engineered by the couple’s disabled daughter, who then proceeds to initiate a truth game — “Chinese Roulette” in which participants must answer awkward questions about each other: “If this person were a wild animal, what would he be?” or, “What would this person have done in the Third Reich?” Brilliantly shot by the great cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, who now often works with Martin Scorsese, Chinese Roulette features Fassbinder’s typical thematic and stylistic artificiality revved up to “an hysterical intensity and formal extravagance not far removed from the horror movie” (Richard Combs, Sight and Sound). “Fassbinder is exploring new methods of cinema narrative that are more original and daring than anything I’ve yet to see by filmmakers who call themselves avant-garde” (Vincent Canby, New York Times.) Colour, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 86 mins.
FRIDAY, JULY 13 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, JULY 19 – 9:05 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 22 – 6:30 PM FRIDAY, JULY 27 – 8:30 PM
Beware of a Holy Whore
Veronika Voss
West Germany 1970. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Lou Castel, Eddie Constantine, Hanna Schygulla, Margarethe von Trotta, Marquard Bohm
West Germany 1982. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Rosel Zech, Hilmar Thate, Annemarie Düringer, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Cornelia Froboess
(Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte)
Fassbinder ranked this work as his very best film. A bitterly self-critical portrait of authoritarianism, power, and the “holy whore” of cinema, it was his candid and caustic contribution to the films-aboutfilmmaking genre, à la Fellini’s 8 ½, Truffaut’s Day for Night, or Godard’s Contempt. Beware of a Holy Whore is set in a hotel somewhere on the Spanish coast, where a German movie crew awaits the arrival of the director (Lou Castel, wearing Fassbinder’s trademark leather jacket), the star (Alphaville’s Eddie Constantine, as himself), and the production money. When the director arrives, he finds everything in chaos, and his attempt to impose order leads to violence on the set of a film intended as a denunciation of violence. Inspired by Fassbinder’s unhappy experiences shooting Whity the same year (the uncannily prolific director made seven features in 1970!), Beware of a Holy Whore also marked the end (and chronicled the breakup) of Fassbinder’s original antiteater (Anti-Theatre) filmmaking collective, with which he had made all his early features. “One of the most devastatingly honest views of filmmakers and filmmaking ever put on screen... Selfindulgent, self-righteous, and self-pitying, it is also funny, provocative, and well made” (Bloomsbury Foreign Film Guide). Colour, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 103 mins. FRIDAY, JULY 13 – 8:15 PM SUNDAY, JULY 15 – 6:30 PM
Effi Briest (Fontane Effi Briest)
West Germany 1974. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Hanna Schygulla, Wolfgang Schenck, Ulli Lommel, Karlheinz Böhm, Ursula Strätz
Effi Briest is one of Fassbinder’s least characteristic works — and, in the opinion of many critics, one of his finest. An elegant and eminently literary adaptation of Theodor Fontane’s 1895 novel, shot in luminous blackand-white, the film stars Fassbinder favourite Hanna Schygulla as a vivacious 17-year-old forced into an arranged marriage with a stern Prussian aristocrat twenty years her senior. Early in the marriage she has a fleeting and unhappy affair with a young officer; six years later, her husband discovers the indiscretion, and feels duty-bound to restore his honour. Fassbinder makes impressive use of voice-over, titles, and unusual fades-to-white to capture the narrative structure of his 19th-century source. One significant deviation from Fontane’s original is the subtitle Fassbinder appends to the title of the film, to underscore its main theme: “Effi Briest, or Many who have an inkling of their possibilities and needs nonetheless accept the prevailing order in their head in the way that they act, and thereby strengthen and confirm it absolutely.” “Fassbinder’s masterpiece ... One stands amazed by the fanatic talent of Fassbinder’s faithful acting troupe, the moving elegance of the photography, the beauty of the art direction” (Penelope Gilliatt, The New Yorker). B&W, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 141 mins. THURSDAY, JULY 19 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, JULY 22 – 8:10 PM
10
(Chinesisches Roulette)
(Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss)
Winner of the Golden Bear for best film at Berlin in 1982, Fassbinder’s penultimate film is a flamboyant tribute to Germany’s giant UFA studios and to Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, and completes the corrosive trilogy on West Germany’s postwar “Economic Miracle” begun with The Marriage of Maria Braun and Lola. Marlene Dietrich-look-alike Rosel Zech stars as the eponymous heroine, a washed-up former screen idol now being exploited by an unscrupulous doctor who has her addicted to morphine. Hilmar Thate plays Robert, the young sportswriter who tries to save her. Veronika Voss is loosely based on the life of Sybille Schmitz, a prominent German actress who committed suicide after the war. Shot in glorious black-and-white, it is one of Fassbinder’s most visually dazzling works. “A chilly, tough, wicked satire disguised as the sort of schmaltzy, black-and-white 1950s melodrama that its characters, with one exception, would never bother to see” (Vincent Canby, New York Times). B&W, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 105 mins. WEDNESDAY, JULY 25 – 6:30 PM FRIDAY, JULY 27 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, JULY 30 – 8:15 PM
Fear of Fear (Angst von der Angst)
West Germany 1975. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Margit Carstensen, Ulrich Faulhaber, Brigitte Mira, Irm Hermann, Armin Meier
Middle-class suburban bliss proves drugaddled depressive nightmare in this Diary of a Mad Hausfrau, which has Fassbinder regular Margit Carstensen (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant) as an apparently happily-married wife and mother suddenly stricken with crippling anxiety during her second pregnancy. Her fears seem to have no discernable cause, except perhaps her weak-willed dolt of a husband, her insensitive, interfering in-laws, and the stultifying banality and emptiness of her picture-perfect life! To combat her inexplicable panic, the local pharmacist begins supplying her with copious amounts of valium — but only because he wants to sleep with her. Fassbinder’s flamboyant, melodramatic handling of the material includes swelling music and stylized subjective camera effects worthy of Sirk or Hitchcock. Made for German TV in the mid-70s, Fear of Fear was hailed by many as a major Fassbinder work, but it was decades before it received a belated North America release and it has remained largely unseen. “One of Fassbinder’s finest works ... His most intense and compelling scrutiny of the human condition” (Richard Roud). Colour, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 88 mins. WEDNESDAY, JULY 25 – 8:30 PM MONDAY, JULY 30 – 6:30 PM
Lola
World on a Wire (Welt am Draht)
West Germany 1973. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Klaus Löwitsch, Barbara Valentin, Mascha Rabben, Karl-Heinz Vosgerau, Günter Lamprecht, Adrian Hoven, Ivan Desny
Critics were agog last year over the rediscovery, restoration, and re-release of World on a Wire, an ultra-rare, ahead-of-itstime sci-fi epic, set in a future of cyberspace and virtual reality, made by Fassbinder back in 1973. “There are movies that make news and movies that are news. World on a Wire is one of the latter. Suddenly: a virtually unknown, newly restored, two-part tele-film directed by long-gone wunderkind R.W. Fassbinder at the height of his powers ... Adapted from Daniel F. Galouye’s 1964 sci-fi novel Simulacron-3 and predicated on the notion of a computer-generated reality populated by ‘identity units’ who believe themselves human, the movie looks back at The Creation of the Humanoids, forward to The Matrix, and directly at Fassbinder’s notoriously cult-like power over his acting ensemble ... World on a Wire mixes the pop art effrontery of Godard’s Alphaville with the cyber-phobic metaphysics of Kubrick’s 2001 (to name the two movies most bluntly referenced) while remaining wholly Fassbinderian in its insolently lugubrious ironies ... [The film’s] power-elite conspiracy yarn [is] played out on two levels of reality — virtual and real, both suffused with free-floating paranoia ... It’s remarkable how current it all seems” (J. Hoberman, Village Voice). “An extraordinary work — prescient, eccentric, and as wildly compelling as any of Fassbinder’s other masterpieces” (Museum of Modern Art, New York). “World on a Wire is the discovery of the season” (Jonathan Rothkopf, Time Out New York). Colour, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 209 mins. (Part I: 104 mins. Part II: 105 mins. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 5 – 6:30 PM
There will be a 15-minute intermission between Parts I & II. Double bill pricing in effect for this presentation.
West Germany 1981. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Barbara Sukowa, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Mario Adorf, Matthias Fuchs, Helga Feddersen
“One of Fassbinder’s four masterpieces” (Vincent Canby, New York Times), Lola is a lush, lavish, candy-coloured hommage to The Blue Angel, the Josef von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich classic. It was also one of Fassbinder’s greatest successes, and helped introduce both Barbara Sukowa and Armin MuellerStahl to wider international audiences. Set in a Bavarian city in 1957, Lola stars Sukowa as an ambitious, social-climbing cabaret singer and prostitute who sets her calculated sights on town’s only honest politician, building commissioner von Bohm (Mueller-Stahl), while also maintaining her long-time affair with a corrupt developer (Mario Adorf). With The Marriage of Maria Braun and Veronika Voss, the film forms part of an informal Fassbinder trilogy on the moral bankruptcy at heart of Germany’s postwar “Economic Miracle.” “The prostitution metaphors come undiluted from early Godard, the poster-art visuals from the magnificent melodramas of Sirk and Minnelli; the provocations are all Fassbinder’s own” (Paul Taylor, Time Out). “Fassbinder’s funniest film and one of his most tender … Lola is a rarity, a work of art important and fun in equal proportions” (Jay Scott, Globe and Mail). Colour, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 113 mins. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8 – 8:05 PM FRIDAY, AUGUST 10 – 6:30 PM
Satan’s Brew (Satansbraten)
West Germany 1976. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Kurt Raab, Margit Carstensen, Ingrid Caven, Volker Spengler, Helen Vita
Gods of the Plague (Götter der Pest)
West Germany 1969. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Hanna Schygulla, Margarethe von Trotta, Harry Baer, Günther Kaufmann, Ingrid Caven
Gods of the Plague, Fassbinder’s third feature, is an extended, Godard-like hommage to the American gangster movie; with Love is Colder Than Death and The American Soldier, it forms part of a loose trilogy of French New Wavestyle gangster films made by Fassbinder early in his career. Harry Baer stars as small-time hood recently released from prison; Hanna Schygulla and Margarethe von Trotta co-star as the two women who love him and betray him. The film is full of pitiable characters who, like Belmondo in Godard’s Breathless, attempt to emulate the tough-guy screen idols of Hollywood. It climaxes with a celebrated shoot-out sequence staged amidst the well-stocked shelves of a supermarket — “a characteristic Fassbinder conjunction of banality and violence” (David Wilson). “Quite mesmerizing ... A witty, stylish meditation on the genre, filtered through the decidedly dark and morbid sensibility of its director” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). “Impeccably performed ... Gods is the quintessential American gangster film if the quintessential American gangster film had been adapted and updated to accommodate a bunch of small-time Munich hoods” (Vincent Canby, New York Times). B&W, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 91 mins. MONDAY, AUGUST 6 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 12 – 8:45 PM
The American Soldier (Der Amerikanische Soldat)
West Germany 1970. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Karl Scheydt, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Elga Sorbas, Margarethe von Trotta, Jan George
The crime films of Samuel Fuller, Howard Hawks, and Raoul Walsh serve as reference points for Fassbinder’s The American Soldier, a manic-depressive, hyperbolic hommage to the American gangster movie that recalls the director’s earlier Gods of the Plague. After serving with the American forces in Vietnam, a young German returns to Munich, where he is hired by three policemen to carry out a series of extralegal killings. Relentlessly moody and neurotic, punctuated by off-beat Brechtian interruptions, and quoting from Fassbinder films past and future, The American Soldier builds to an astonishing slow-motion climax — a shoot-out amidst the anonymous baggage lockers of a train station — that is as delirious a sequence as any in the director’s considerable oeuvre. “This film marks a decisive step towards ‘real’ Fassbinder: the absurdity of its world of second-hand experience invests every cliché with a meaning it never had before” (Tony Rayns, Time Out). “Audacious and technically brilliant’ (Roger Ebert). B&W, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 80 mins. MONDAY, AUGUST 6 – 8:15 PM WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8 – 6:30 PM
“Fassbinder’s most self-indulgent, decadent work” (Anna Kuhn), the aptlynamed Satan’s Brew is the director’s first flat-out comedy, a grotesque, misanthropic concoction of absurdism, Expressionism, and outré sexual politics that demolishes all boundaries of good taste. After apparently murdering his rich mistress during sadomasochistic gameplaying, a washed-up writer becomes convinced that he is the 19th-century symbolist poet Stefan George. His mentally slow brother, in the meantime, collects dead flies for sexual purposes. “Hollywood screwball comedies pale in comparison” (NFT/London). “If you want to know where Fassbinder’s head is at, this is the film to see” (Richard Roud). “All my films, or nearly all of them, have been shown on German TV, generally two years after theatrical release. Satan’s Brew is the only one that won’t be shown. That’s the one that they’ll never accept” (Fassbinder). “Still outrageous after all these years, Satan’s Brew plays like a Teutonic version of an early John Waters movie ... Fassbinder never again made as subversive — and sublimely silly — a movie as this one” (Lawrence O’Toole, Entertainment Weekly). Colour, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 112 mins. FRIDAY, AUGUST 10 – 8:40 PM MONDAY, AUGUST 13 – 6:30 PM
Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (Mutter Küsters Fahrt zum Himmel)
West Germany 1975. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Cast: Brigitte Mira, Ingrid Caven, Karlheinz Böhm, Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann
A scathing social/political satire that took provocative swipes at both the Left and Right, Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven proved to be one of Fassbinder’s most controversial films. After a distraught factory worker kills his supervisor and then himself, his widow (Brigitte Mira, from Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) finds herself shamelessly exploited by her careerist chanteuse daughter, the reactionary tabloid press, and the West German Communist Party, all of whom seek to use the tragedy for their own ends. Fassbinder’s film was well received abroad but sparked outrage at home; many were offended by its depiction of a German Left seriously out of touch with the working class. Mother Küsters was turned down by the 1975 Berlin Film Festival; its screening at the Forum, the Berlin fest’s “fringe” event, was disrupted by left-wing protests. Fassbinder ultimately opted to change the film’s ending; both the original and the re-shot (and “ironic”) one are included here. “A witty, spare, beautifully performed political comedy ... If you weren’t already aware that Fassbinder refuses to make movies like anyone else, you have a far from solemn obligation to [see] Mother Küsters” (Vincent Canby, New York Times). Colour, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 120 mins. SUNDAY, AUGUST 12 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, AUGUST 13 – 8:40 PM
11
SENIOR/ STUDENT
Tickets go on sale at the Box Office 30 minutes before the first show of the evening. Advance tickets are available for credit card purchase at www.cinematheque.bc.ca. Events, times, and prices
HOW TO BUY TICKETS
unless otherwise indicated
ADULT (18+)
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15
5
FASSBINDER
Veronika Voss (p 10)
8:15pm
6:30pm
FASSBINDER
8:10pm
Psycho (p 17)
23
16
6
30
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock V: Four O’Clock & Incident at a Corner (p 17)
8:30pm
Strangers on a Train (p 17)
6:30pm
HITCHCOCK
Fear of Fear (p 10)
29
22
(p 7)
FASTWURMS: MASH//UP
7:30pm
DIM CINEMA
(p 9)
Love Is Colder Than Death
8:50pm
Fox and His Friends (p 9)
6:30pm
FASSBINDER
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock VI: Poison, Banquo’s Chair, & Arthur (p 17)
6:30pm
HITCHCOCK
Effi Briest (p 10)
8:10pm
Chinese Roulette (p 10)
6:30pm
FASSBINDER
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (p 9)
8:30pm
Beware of a Holy Whore (p 10)
6:30pm
FASSBINDER
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (p 4)
CINEMA SUNDAY 1:00pm
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock II: Back for Christmas, Bon Voyage, & Aventure Malgache (p 15)
8:10pm
The 39 Steps (p 15)
6:30pm
HITCHCOCK
9
(p 9)
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (p 9)
8
The Marriage of Maria Braun
8:15pm
2
8:15pm
Douglas Sirk’s All that Heaven Allows (p 9)
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (p 9)
6:30pm
(p 9)
6:30pm
4:30pm
FASSBINDER Douglas Sirk’s All that Heaven Allows (p 9)
1
The Marriage of Maria Braun
4:00pm
FASSBINDER
JULY
SUNDAY
MONDAY
The 39 Steps (p 15)
8:15pm
Fear of Fear (p 10)
8:30pm
Veronika Voss (p 10)
6:30pm
FASSBINDER
Elling (p6)
7:30pm
FRAMES OF MIND
FASSBINDER
World on a Wire (p 11)
6:30pm
FASSBINDER
8
1
25
26
FASSBINDER
6
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Marnie (p 18)
6:30pm
10
HITCHCOCK FASSBINDER
North by Northwest (p 18)
8:15pm
11
4
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock VII: The Crystal Trench, Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat, & The Horse Player (p 18)
9:00pm
6:30pm
9
6:30pm North by Northwest (p 18)
HITCHCOCK Directed by Alfred Hitchcock VII: The Crystal Trench, Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat, & The Horse Player (p 18)
28
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock VI: Poison, Banquo’s Chair, & Arthur (p 17)
8:35pm
Psycho (p 17)
6:30pm
HITCHCOCK
6:30pm
3
27
HITCHCOCK
North by Northwest (p 18)
7:00pm
HITCHCOCK
21
14
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock IV: The Perfect Crime, Lamb to the Slaughter, & Dip in the Pool (p 16)
HITCHCOCK
Chinese Roulette (p 10)
Veronika Voss (p 10)
6:30pm
FASSBINDER
Rear Window (p 16)
8:10pm
Rear Window (p 16)
8:40pm
6:30pm
HITCHCOCK Directed by Alfred Hitchcock IV: The Perfect Crime, Lamb to the Slaughter, & Dip in the Pool (p 16)
Strangers on a Train (p 17)
PACIFIC CINÉMATHÈQUE’S 40TH BIRTHDAY! (p 5)
8:05pm
Sabotage (p 16)
6:30pm
HITCHCOCK
6:30pm
HITCHCOCK
8:15pm
8:30pm
2
20
13
7
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock I: Revenge, Breakdown, & The Case of Mr. Pelham (p 15)
9:00pm
Vertigo (p 15)
6:30pm
HITCHCOCK
SATURDAY
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock III: Wet Sunday, Mr. Blanchard’s Secret, & One Beware of a Holy Whore (p 10) More Mile to Go (p 16)
The Merchant of Four Seasons (p 10)
6:30pm
FASSBINDER
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (p 9)
8:45pm
8:40pm
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock V: Four O’Clock & Incident at a Corner (p 17)
6:30pm
HITCHCOCK
The Merchant of Four Seasons (p 10)
9:05pm
Effi Briest (p 10)
6:30pm
FASSBINDER
Fox and His Friends (p 9)
19
Sabotage (p 16)
8:50pm
18
8:10pm
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (p 9)
6:30pm
12
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock III: Wet Sunday, Mr. Blanchard’s Secret, & One More Mile to Go (p 16)
FASSBINDER
6:30pm
HITCHCOCK
Vertigo (p 15)
(p 9)
11
5
FRIDAY
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock 6:30pm I: Revenge, Breakdown, & The Marriage of Maria Braun The Case of Mr. Pelham (p 15) (p 9)
6:30pm
HITCHCOCK
8:10pm
4
THURSDAY
The Marriage of Maria Braun
8:15pm
(p 9)
Love Is Colder Than Death
6:30pm
FASSBINDER
WEDNESDAY
29 AUGUST
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock II: Back for Christmas, Bon Voyage, & Aventure Malgache (p 15)
6:30pm
HITCHCOCK
10
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19
Inglourious Basterds (p 21)
Jaws (p 21)
8:45pm
UNIVERSAL 100 YEARS
27
20
The Birds (p 21)
6:30pm
UNIVERSAL 100 YEARS
7:00pm
Frankenstein (p 20)
26
Abigail Child: What We Desire (p 7)
9:30pm
7:30pm
DIM CINEMA
Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (p 11)
Dracula (p 20)
8:00pm
The Mummy (p 20)
6:30pm
UNIVERSAL 100 YEARS
The Iron Giant (p 4)
CINEMA SUNDAY 1:00pm
Gods of the Plague (p 11)
8:45pm
8:40pm
Satan’s Brew (p 11)
6:30pm
Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (p 11)
6:30pm
13
The American Soldier (p 11)
FASSBINDER
12
8:15pm
Gods of the Plague (p 11)
6:30pm
FASSBINDER
World on a Wire (p 11)
6:30pm
FASSBINDER
22
22
15 16
6:30pm
Cobra Woman (p 22)
9:30pm
The Black Cat (p 22)
8:00pm
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (p 22)
UNIVERSAL 100 YEARS
29
9:30pm Dracula (p 20)
The Mummy (p 20)
8:00pm Cobra Woman (p 22)
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (p 22)
The Incredible Shrinking Man (p 22)
9:30pm
The Black Cat (p 22)
The Black Cat (p 22)
31 UNIVERSAL 100 YEARS
6:30pm
Jaws (p 21)
8:45pm
The Birds (p 21)
UNIVERSAL 100 YEARS
25
The Birds (p 21)
8:50pm
Jaws (p 21)
UNIVERSAL 100 YEARS
6:30pm
The Mummy (p 20)
9:30pm
6:30pm
8:00pm
Frankenstein (p 20)
24
Frankenstein (p 20)
8:00pm
6:30pm
UNIVERSAL 100 YEARS
18
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock VIII: Bang! You’re Dead! & I Saw the Whole Thing (p 18)
8:50pm
Dracula (p 20)
8:05pm 9:30pm
17 UNIVERSAL 100 YEARS
6:30pm
Satan’s Brew (p 11)
8:40pm
Lola (p 11)
6:30pm
The Incredible Shrinking Man (p 22)
6:30pm
UNIVERSAL 100 YEARS
30 28
Inglourious Basterds (p 21)
All Quiet on the Western Front (p 20)
23
UNIVERSAL 100 YEARS
7:00pm
All Quiet on the Western Front (p 20)
UNIVERSAL 100 YEARS
7:00pm
Marnie (p 18)
8:15pm
VIII: Bang! You’re Dead! & I Saw the Whole Thing (p 18)
7:00pm
UNIVERSAL 100 YEARS
Momma’s Man (p 6)
7:30pm
FRAMES OF MIND
Lola (p 11)
8:05pm
The American Soldier (p 11)
6:30pm
ALFRED The Complete Works for
Television, Two
French Rarities,
and Nine Sensational
Almost always overlooked in retrospectives of Alfred Hitchcock’s directorial work are the many films Hitchcock directed for television in the seven years from 1955 to 1962, in the midst of what is almost certainly the greatest creative peak of his filmmaking career. Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, and Marnie, not to mention The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much (remake), and The Wrong Man — these are among the 11 Hitchcock theatrical features released in the decade between 1954 and 1964. But Hitchcock’s prodigious output during this period also includes, remarkably, no less than 20 half-hour or one-hour dramas for television, 17 of them made for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, his popular weekly anthology series (which ran for seven seasons), and one for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, its successor (which ran for three seasons). In fact, much of Hitchcock’s great fame and carefully cultivated public persona — his status, even now, as perhaps the film director best known and most recognizable to the general public — stems from his weekly appearances on these television programs: each episode, whether directed by Hitchcock or not (and the vast majority were directed by others), featured droll, dryly sardonic introductions (and epilogues) by Hitchcock himself. And, of course, the distinctive music used as a theme in both series, Charles-François Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette,” would become forever associated in the public mind with Hitchcock and his gallows sense of humour.
“Hitchcock was the first great movie director who knew what to do with television: he used it to make himself rich and famous.” CARYN JAMES, NEW YORK TIMES
Pacific Cinémathèque’s summer Hitchcock season, “Directed by Alfred Hitchcock,” offers an alternative look at the Master of Suspense’s work by shining a rare spotlight on all 20 of the films Hitchcock directed for TV: the 18 episodes made for Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, as well as the single episodes he directed for Suspicion and Ford Startime, two other weekly anthology series. In addition, our program includes Aventure Malgache and Bon Voyage, the two “lost” half-hour films that Hitchcock, a resident of Hollywood since 1939, returned to England to direct for the Allied war effort in 1944. Commissioned by the British Ministry of Information for screening in newly-liberated parts of France, these two works, both in French, were unseen in the English-speaking world until 1993. Anchoring the entire exhibition will be nine of the director’s greatest and most thrilling achievements: The 39 Steps, Sabotage, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, and Marnie.
"Television
has brought
murder back into the home,
where it belongs.” ALFRED HITCHCOCK
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Directed by Alfred Hitchcock I
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Revenge
Breakdown
The Case of Mr. Pelham
In the debut episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, his longrunning anthology series, Hitchcock directs Ralph Meeker (Kiss Me Deadly) and Vera Miles (The Wrong Man, Psycho) in the tale of a man who decides to take the law into his own hands after his wife is assaulted. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 1. B&W, Digibeta video. 26 mins.
Joseph Cotten (Shadow of a Doubt, Citizen Kane) plays a cold-hearted businessman rendered so completely paralyzed by a traffic accident that he is pronounced dead at the scene. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 1. B&W, Digibeta video. 26 mins.
Mr. Pelham (The Seven Year Itch’s Tom Ewell) comes to the disturbing conclusion that an exact double is trying to take over his life. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 1. B&W, Digibeta video. 30 mins.
USA 1955. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Ralph Meeker, Vera Miles, Frances Bavier, Ray Montgomery
USA 1955. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Joseph Cotten, Raymond Bailey, Forrest Stanley, Harry Shannon
USA 1955. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Tom Ewell, Raymond Bailey, Justice Watson, Kirby Smith
THURSDAY, JULY 5 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, JULY 7 – 9:00 PM
Vertigo USA 1958. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Henry Jones, Tom Helmore
Now routinely (and justifiably) cited as one of cinema’s greatest works — it was voted one of the ten best films of all time in Sight and Sound’s 1982, 1992, and 2002 polls of international critics — Hitchcock’s dreamlike chef d’oeuvre was released in 1958 to middling notices and indifferent audiences, and was largely scorned by serious-minded reviewers (“far-fetched nonsense” said The New Yorker). A perverse, poetic, moodily muted psychological thriller, Vertigo offers a disturbing, stunningly cynical, and intensely personal view of male-female relationships. Scottie (James Stewart), a former San Francisco policeman suffering from vertigo, is sucked into a vortex of romantic obsession after he is hired to tail the coolly beautiful Madeleine (Kim Novak), wife of an old pal. Many unhappy months later, he meets a Madeleine look-alike, and obsessively, compulsively, shamelessly attempts to make her over in Madeleine’s image. The director’s own unhappy obsessions with his cool-blonde leading ladies are well documented; Vertigo is Hitchcock’s most nakedly honest film — “despairingly sardonic and demanding of multiple viewings” (James Monaco). “Hitchcock’s masterpiece ... and one of the four or five most profound and beautiful films the cinema has yet given us” (Robin Wood). Colour, 35mm. 128 mins.
The 39 Steps Great Britain 1935. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Madeleine Carroll, Robert Donat, Peggy Ashcroft, John Laurie, Godfrey Tearle
Great suspenseful fun, and a favourite of many Hitchcock aficionados, this loose adoption of John Buchan’s spy novel features Robert Donat as an innocent Canadian pursued by both police and villains as he sets out to find those responsible for murdering a woman in his flat. The classic Hitchcock double chase has the hero on the run from London to Scotland, where he winds up fleeing across the moors while handcuffed to a hostile young woman (Madeleine Carroll) who thinks him a killer. Featuring superb performances by the cast, supremely mischievous Hitchcock humour, and many memorable sequences — Donat’s hastily improvised speech to a political meeting he inadvertently crashes; the Mr. Memory musical hall finale — The 39 Steps is a virtual compendium of great Hitchcock motifs. “One of the three or four best things Hitchcock ever did” (Pauline Kael). “This is simply one of the best films of its genre and it richly displays Hitchcock’s complete and playful mastery of the language of filmmaking” (James Monaco). B&W, 35mm. 85 mins. SUNDAY, JULY 8 – 6:30 PM TUESDAY, JULY 10 – 8:15 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 5 – 8:10 PM SATURDAY, JULY 7 – 6:30 PM
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Directed by Alfred Hitchcock II
Back for Christmas
USA 1956. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: John Williams, Isobel Elsom, Arthur Gould-Porter, Lillian Kemble-Cooper
On the eve of a trip to California, a murder-minded English husband plots what he thinks will be the perfect crime. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 1. B&W, Digibeta video. 30 mins.
Bon Voyage
Great Britain 1944. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: John Blythe, The Molière Players
One of two wartime rarities Hitchcock made in French for the British Ministry of Information — Aventure Malgache, also screening in this program, is the other — Bon Voyage is a taut espionage thriller employing some crafty narrative trickery. A downed RAF airman escapes from German captivity and makes his way through occupied France, assisted by agents of the French Resistance. Only later does he learn that all was not quite what it seemed to be. The shadowy Expressionist cinematography is by Günther Krampf, who shot the Pabst masterpiece Pandora’s Box. B&W, Digibeta video, in French with English subtitles. 26 mins.
Aventure Malgache (Madagascar Landing)
Great Britain 1944. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: The Molière Players
Hitchcock’s dramatization of divisions among the Free French is set in Vichy-controlled Madagascar, where a Resistance leader and a corrupt police official engage in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse. The puzzle-box narrative begins in London, where a group of Free French actors are preparing a play based on the events. The complex treatment of the Free French was deemed insufficiently heroic; the film was never released. “Unmistakably the genuine article... Aventure Malgache abounds in Hitchcockian touches” (Philip Kemp, Sight and Sound). B&W, Digibeta video, in French with English subtitles. 31 mins. SUNDAY, JULY 8 – 8:10 PM TUESDAY, JULY 10 – 6:30 PM 15
Sabotage
Great Britain 1936. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Oscar Homolka, Sylvia Sidney, John Loder, Desmond Tester, Joyce Barbour
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock III
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock IV
Wet Saturday
USA 1956. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Cedric Hardwicke, John William, Tita Purdon, Kathryn Givney
When his half-mad daughter Millicent murders the schoolmaster with a mallet, wealthy Mr. Princey (Cedric Hardwicke) seeks someone else to frame for the crime. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 2. B&W, Digibeta video. 26 mins.
Often cited as Hitchcock’s cruellest film before Psycho, this unnerving suspense thriller is “ripe for reevaluation as the masterpiece of Hitchcock’s British period” (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader). An adaptation and update of Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent (Hitchcock’s previous feature, confusingly enough, was titled The Secret Agent, but had been based on Somerset Maugham, not Conrad), Sabotage is set in the shabby London milieu of Hitchcock’s childhood. American Sylvia Sidney and Austrian Oscar Homolka star as a young married couple who operate a neighbourhood movie theatre; unbeknownst to her, he’s a sinister foreign agent — and he has absolutely no qualms about using her trusting young brother (child actor Desmond Tester) to further his terrorist ends. Sabotage’s most notorious (and fearless) sequence features the boy, a bus, and a time bomb. Sabotage has been called “Hitchcock’s most obviously autobiographical film” (Patrick Humphries) and “just about the best of his English thrillers” (Pauline Kael). “This 1936 study of murderous intimacy is as harrowing as anything in Hitchcock, and it’s one of his few films to comment directly on the movies” (Kehr). B&W, 35mm. 76 mins. THURSDAY, JULY 12 – 8:10 PM SATURDAY, JULY 14 – 6:30 PM
The Perfect Crime
USA 1957. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Vincent Price, James Gregory, Gavin Gordon, Marianne Stewart
Vincent Price plays an arrogant master detective in 1920s New York whose perfect record is threatened by evidence that he has sent an innocent man to his death. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 3. B&W, Digibeta video. 25 mins.
Mr. Blanchard’s Secret
USA 1956. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Mary Scott, Robert Horton, Meg Mundy, Dayton Lummis
A busybody mystery writer with an overactive imagination wonders why she has never seen the wife of her new nextdoor neighbour. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 2. B&W, Digibeta video. 26 mins.
Rear Window Lamb to the Slaughter
USA 1958. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Barbara Bel Geddes, Harold J. Stone, Allan Lane, Ken Clark
Roald Dahl wrote and Vertigo’s Barbara Bel Geddes stars in this mordant tale of a spurned wife, her police chief husband, and a frozen leg of lamb. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 3. B&W, Digibeta video. 30 mins.
One More Mile to Go
USA 1957. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: David Wayne, Steve Brodie, Louise Larabee, Norman Leavitt
A persistent motorcycle cop won’t leave a driver with a broken taillight — and a terrible secret in the trunk — alone. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 2. B&W, Digibeta video. 26 mins. THURSDAY, JULY 12 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, JULY 14 – 8:05 PM
Dip in the Pool
USA 1958. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Keenan Wynn, Fay Wray, Philip Bourneuf, Louise Platt
A compulsive gambler aboard a cruise ship resorts to drastic measures in an effort to win a betting pool. Based on a story by Roald Dahl. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 3. B&W, Digibeta video. 26 mins. FRIDAY, JULY 20 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, JULY 21 – 8:40 PM
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USA 1954. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr, Wendell Corey
A luminous high point in the careers of its director and two stars, Hitchcock’s Rear Window is a suspense thriller, a romance, and an extended, cautionary mediation on voyeurism and cinema, all rolled into one extraordinary and inexhaustible whole. One of Hitchcock’s major masterpieces, it is also the best of those quirky experiments (the likes of Lifeboat and Rope) in which he set himself an intriguing technical challenge: in this case, the attempt to make a film from the viewpoint of a single character, on the confines of a single set. And what a set! Jimmy Stewart plays a news photographer immobilized by a broken leg who spends his convalescence spying on the all neighbours across the courtyard in his Greenwich Village apartment complex. Grace Kelly is his glamorous, attentive girlfriend, a fashion editor he resists marrying. The little domestic dramas these two observe across the way unfold like mini-movies; the peepingtom action really heats up when they begin to suspect that one of the neighbours has murdered his wife. Hitchcock transforms the physical restrictions of the production into one of his most marvellously cinematic (and most self-revelatory) works. Kelly’s amazing clothes are reason enough to see this unforgettable film. Colour, 35mm. 112 mins. FRIDAY, JULY 20 – 8:10 PM SATURDAY, JULY 21 – 6:30 PM
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock V
Four O’Clock
Strangers on a Train USA 1951. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll, Patricia Hitchcock
“One of Hitchcock’s most fascinating films” (David Thomson), Strangers on a Train is a nifty, nasty noir thriller with a great hardboiled pedigree: it’s based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith and has a screenplay co-credited to Raymond Chandler. Unhappily married tennis star Guy (Farley Granger) meets complete stranger Bruno (Robert Walker) on a train trip, and the two jokingly agree to a murder pact whereby Bruno will slay Guy’s wife in return for Guy killing Bruno’s hated father. When psychotic Bruno then proceeds to fulfil his end of the mock bargain, he expects the horrified Guy to do the same — and threatens to frame him for the murder already committed if Guy doesn’t comply. Robert Walker’s extraordinary performance as the diabolical Bruno is one of the most celebrated in the Hitchcock canon; Strangers on a Train also features a famed merry-go-round climax, and Oscar-nominated cinematography by Hitchcock regular Robert Burks. “Hitchcock’s bizarre, malicious comedy ... It’s intensely enjoyable — in some ways the best of Hitchcock’s American films ... with some of the best dialogue that ever graced a thriller” (Pauline Kael). B&W, 35mm. 101 mins.
Incident at a Corner
USA 1957. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: E.G. Marshall, Nancy Kelly, Richard Long, Tom Pittman, Harry Dean Stanton
USA 1960. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Vera Miles, George Peppard, Jack Albertson, Leora Dana, Paul Hartman
Alfred Hitchcock was executive producer of the NBC mystery/drama anthology series Suspicion, which ran for one season; he also directed its premier episode, Four O’Clock. The tense, time-ticking plot has E.G. Marshall as a watch repairman convinced his wife is having an affair. Consumed with jealousy, he devises a time bomb to exact his revenge, but an unexpected twist or two will prevent his plans from proceeding like clockwork. B&W, Digibeta video. 60 mins.
Of the 20 TV episodes directed by Hitchcock, only one was in colour: this Rashomon-like rarity from the NBC anthology series Ford Startime (aka Lincoln-Mercury Startime), made mere days after Hitchcock had finished shooting Psycho. In a small American town, a relatively minor incident between an elderly crossing guard and an impatient driver spirals into malicious rumours and serious accusations. Psycho actress Vera Miles plays the crossing guard’s daughter; George Peppard co-stars as her fiancé. Colour, Digibeta video. 60 mins. MONDAY, JULY 23 – 8:30 PM THURSDAY, JULY 26 – 6:30 PM
Psycho USA 1960. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam
“Uh-uh, Mother-m-mother, uh, what is the phrase? She isn’t quite herself today.” After years of suave, sophisticated, highly polished colour thrillers (the most recent of which was the exquisite North by Northwest), Alfred Hitchcock abruptly and unexpectedly changed gears with this more modest, more morbid monochrome masterwork, a stunning exercise in mind-blowingly manipulative horror. Critics decried Psycho as “nauseating” and “sadistic” even while acknowledging its undeniable technical brilliance. The film is now universally recognized as one of the director’s most important and profound achievements. And, in a retrospective spotlighting Hitchcock’s work for TV, it’s worth noting that Psycho was made, inexpensively, using the methods and many of the crew employed on Hitchcock’s hit series Alfred Hitchcock Presents! Janet Leigh is Phoenix secretary Marion Crane, absconding with a small fortune of her employer’s money. Anthony Perkins is nervous Norman Bates, proprietor of the motel that Miss Crane makes the unfortunate mistake of checking into. Psycho’s celebrated shower scene is one of cinema’s great montage sequences, while the film’s subversive disruption of conventional audience identification, its stimulus/response manipulation and implicit indictment of our voyeurism, is still absolutely, breathtakingly shocking. And, of course, great fun. “Hitchcock’s best film ... Stunningly realized ... A masterpiece by any standard” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). B&W, 35mm. 109 mins.
MONDAY, JULY 23 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, JULY 26 – 8:40 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 28 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, JULY 29 – 8:10 PM
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock VI
Poison
Banquo’s Chair
Arthur
The alcoholic owner of a tropical plantation, lying scared stiff in bed, insists there’s a deadly snake under the covers, and asks his disgruntled business partner for help. Based on a story by Roald Dahl. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 4. B&W, Digibeta video. 26 mins.
A retired Scotland Yard detective comes up with a ghostly plan to extract a confession from a man suspected of murdering an elderly relative. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 4. B&W, Digibeta video. 30 mins.
Mild-mannered Arthur (Laurence Harvey), proprietor of an automated one-man chicken farm, is not thrilled when his fickle ex-fiancée wants to resume their relationship. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 5. B&W, Digibeta video. 30 mins. SATURDAY, JULY 28 – 8:35 PM SUNDAY, JULY 29 – 6:30 PM
USA 1958. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Wendell Corey, James Donald, Arnold Moss, Weaver Levy
USA 1959. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: John Williams, Hilda Plowright, Kenneth Haig, Reginald Gardiner
USA 1959. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Laurence Harvey, Hazel Court, Patrick McNee, Robert Douglas
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North by Northwest USA 1959. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau, Jessie Royce Landis
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock VII
Is there a more entertaining and richly satisfying Hitchcock film than North by Northwest? From the spiffy Saul Bass title sequence to the cliff-hanger climax on Mount Rushmore, with a zillion breathless, bizarre, and Freudian twists and turns in between, this quintessential suspense thriller is the largest and most lavish of the director’s works. The impeccable Cary Grant plays Roger Thornhill, a New York City advertising executive who, in a classic case of Hitchcockian mistaken identity, finds himself taken for a U.S. intelligent agent and forced on a dangerous cross-country adventure -- including, of course, one heart-stopping encounter with a crop duster on an Indiana cornfield. Ernest Lehman wrote the wild and witty double-chase script; the stunning images, in VistaVision and Technicolor, are by Robert Burks, and have to be seen on the big screen to be truly appreciated. François Truffaut, in his wonderful book-length interview with Hitchcock, declared, “just as The 39 Steps may be regarded as the compendium of your work in Britain, North by Northwest is the picture that epitomizes the whole of your work in America.” Hitchcock agreed. Colour, 35mm. 136 mins. THURSDAY, AUGUST 2 – 7:00 PM
PACIFIC CINÉMATHÈQUE’S 40TH BIRTHDAY! ALL TICKETS (August 2 only) $1 CASH ONLY. NO ONLINE ADVANCE TICKETS. ----------------
The Crystal Trench
FRIDAY, AUGUST 3 – 8:15 PM SATURDAY, AUGUST 4 – 6:30 PM
USA 1959. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Patricia Owens, James Donald, Werner Klemperer, Patrick McNee
After her husband is irretrievably lost in a climbing accident in the Swiss Alps, a young widow won’t move on with her life until she can see his body one last time. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 5. B&W, Digibeta video. 30 mins.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock VIII
Bang! You’re Dead! Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat
USA 1960. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Audrey Meadows, Les Tremayne, Stephen Chase, Sally Hughes
A dentist’s adulterous wife (Audrey Meadows of The Honeymooners) concocts a clever scheme to deceive her husband about the origins of an expensive fur coat. Based on a story by Roald Dahl. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 6. B&W, Digibeta video. 30 mins.
USA 1961. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Billy Mumy, Stephen Dunne, Lucy Prentis, Biff Elliot
When six-year-old Jackie (Lost in Space’s Billy Mumy) finds a loaded gun in his uncle’s luggage, he thinks it’s the gift he’s been promised. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 7. B&W, Digibeta video. 30 mins.
Marnie
USA 1964. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, Diane Baker, Martin Gabel, Louise Latham
Perhaps the most underrated of Hitchcock’s late-period American films, Marnie was largely dismissed upon its initial release, but has since been reappraised by many as one of the director’s masterpieces: a disquieting, Vertigo-like study of perverse romance and romantic obsession. Tippi Hedren, fresh from her appearance in The Birds (and here suffering off-screen under Hitchcock’s own overbearing obsession with her), has the title role as a beautiful but pathologically frigid kleptomaniac. Sean Connery co-stars as the wealthy employer who discovers her larcenous nature. No slouch in the emotionally-confused department himself, he blackmails Marnie into marrying him. Red shock-flashes are used to convey the heroine’s precarious psychological state; critics are still debating whether or not the obviously artificial elements — fake backdrops, clumsy rear projection — are also Expressionist devices or just slapdash. “Hitchcock’s most liberated and poetic film, Marnie is a masterpiece of psychological mystery that encompasses all of the director’s obsessions” (James Monaco). “As sour a vision of malefemale interaction as Vertigo ... It’s thrilling to watch, lush, cool, and oddly moving” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). Colour, 35mm. 125 mins. THURSDAY, AUGUST 9 – 8:15 PM SATURDAY, AUGUST 11 – 6:30 PM
NEW 35mm PRINT!
The Birds I Saw the Whole Thing
USA 1962. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: John Forsythe, Kent Smith, Evans Evans, John Fiedler,
The Horse Player
USA 1961. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Claude Rains, Ed Gardner, Percy Helton, Holly Bane
Claude Rains (Casablanca, Notorious) plays a Catholic priest who has moral qualms about getting in on the action when prayer seems to be helping a parishioner win big at the race track. Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Season 6. B&W, Digibeta video. 30 mins. FRIDAY, AUGUST 3 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, AUGUST 4 – 9:00 PM
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The only episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour actually directed by Hitchcock — and Hitchcock’s last directorial effort for television — has John Forsythe (The Trouble With Harry, Topaz, TV’s Dynasty) as a mystery writer who conducts his own defence when he is put on trial for a fatal traffic accident. The Alfred Hitchcock Hour – Season 1. B&W, Digibeta video. 60 mins. THURSDAY, AUGUST 9 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, AUGUST 11 – 8:50 PM
Alfred Hitchcock’s legendary doomsday fantasia, adapted from a Daphne du Maurier short story, is cinema’s greatest disaster movie and one of the director’s finest works. Starring Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, a murder of crows, and flocks of other Angry Birds, The Birds screens in a brand-new 35mm print as part of our “Universal Pictures: Celebrating 100 Years” presentation. See page 21 for full film description and details! FRIDAY, AUGUST 24 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, AUGUST 25 – 8:50 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 26 – 6:30 PM
CELEBRATING
100YEARS This irony informs Universal’s post-war emergence as a global entertainment power. This anti-trust irony informs Universal’s post-war a global entertainment power. After actions levelled the playingemergence field in theas1940s, Universal moved into the After with anti-trust actions mass levelled the playing fithat eld in the 1940s, Universal moved into the A-list superlative entertainment ennobled populist genres, including A-list with superlative entertainment that(Pillow ennobled genres,comedies including melodramas (Magnificentmass Obsession), sex farces Talk), populist and homespun melodramas (Magnifi cent Obsession), sex farcesalso (Pillow Talk), and comedies (the Francis the Talking Mule series). Universal innovated newhomespun industry practices, (the Francisthe the“percentage Talking Muledeal” series). alsotelevision innovatedproduction. new industry practices, pioneering andUniversal embracing It changed pioneering the with “percentage deal” andestablished embracingthe television production. It that changed the game again Jaws (1975), which “blockbuster” formula still the game the again with Jaws (1975), which established the “blockbuster” formula that still industry today. From its beginnings under Carl Laemmle, there existed a tension between Universal’s dominates dominates the industry today. Fromtoitsproduce beginnings under Carl Laemmle, there existed a tension need low-budget “programmers” and the “major minor’s”between desire toUniversal’s compete need to produce low-budgetstudios “programmers” andnational the “major minor’s” desire compete alongside better-capitalized — with their theatre chains — ontothe level Throughout its history, Universal has translated economic necessity into a uniquely Throughout its history, hasbetween translated economic necessity a uniquely better-capitalized studioswhile — with theirofnational theatre — ontitles the level challenge to theUniversal distinctions prestigious and popular into entertainment. ofalongside big-budget A pictures. Ironically, several Universal’s earlychains “prestige” are American American challenge to the distinctions between prestigious and popular entertainment. of big-budget pictures. Ironically, while several of Universal’s “prestige” titles are pleased to celebrate Universal Pictures’ hundred-year legacy. beloved classicsAtoday, including All Quiet on the Western Frontearly (1930), it remains the are B We belovedincluding classics today, including Quiet on (Frankenstein, the Western Front (1930), remains the pictures, its iconic 1930s All horror cycle Dracula, TheitMummy), thatB We are pleased to celebrate Universal Pictures’ hundred-year legacy. UCLA FILM AND TELEVISION ARCHIVE pictures, including its iconic cycle (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy), that epitomize its contribution to fi1930s lm art horror and commerce. UCLA FILM AND TELEVISION ARCHIVE epitomize its contribution to film art and commerce. The Universal Film Manufacturing Company incorporated on April 30, 1912, the result of Universal FilmaManufacturing Company incorporated on had Aprilbeen 30, 1912, theThomas result of aThe merger between number of independent companies that battling a mergerMotion between a number of independent companies thaton had battling Edison’s Picture Patents Trust. Universal would go tobeen become the Thomas oldest Edison’s Motion Picture Trust. on to become oldest continuously operating filmPatents producer and Universal distributorwould in thego United States. In anthe industry continuously operating film producer distributor the United States. industry defi ned by change, Universal’s spinningand globe logo hasinremained, along withInitsanback lot, defitour, ned by change, Universal’s spinning globe logo has remained, along with its back lot, and in Universal City, California. and tour, in Universal City, California.
IN ASSOCIATION WITH IN ASSOCIATION WITH
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NEW 35mm RESTORATION!
All Quiet on the Western Front
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: “Universal Pictures: Celebrating 100 Years” is organized by Universal Pictures and the UCLA Film and Television Archive and presented by American Express. The program was curated by UCLA, where it was first presented in May and June, and is touring to New York, Chicago, Berkeley, Vancouver, Seattle, Cambridge MA, Columbus, Portland OR, Houston, Ithaca NY, Atlanta, and Washington DC. For their kind assistance in making our Vancouver presentation possible, Pacific Cinémathèque is very grateful in Shannon Kelley, Head of Public Programs, UCLA Film and Television Archive, and Paul Ginsburg, Vice President, Film Distribution, NBC Universal.
USA 1930. Director: Lewis Milestone Cast: Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Raymond Griffith, Slim Summerville
Lewis Milestone’s adaptation of the famed pacifist novel by Erich Maria Remarque won the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director, and remains one of cinema’s most powerful anti-war works. The film screens here in a beautiful new 35mm restoration which showcases its stunning visual accomplishments and the great scale of Universal’s spareno-expense production. Lew Ayres heads the fine cast; the film follows a group of idealistic German schoolboys who, incited by the patriotic exhortations of their schoolmaster, enlist in the German Army to fight for the glory of the Fatherland. The harsh rigours of basic training are followed by grimmer realities on the front lines and in the trenches of a World War I battlefield. Milestone’s remarkably mobile and inventive camerawork (he shot with a silent camera to avoid the static look of early talkies) became his directorial signature, and remains thrilling and strikingly modern. Steven Spielberg has cited All Quiet on the Western Front as one of the inspirations for Saving Private Ryan. Both Milestone’s film and Remarque’s novel were banned by the Nazis. “Perhaps the greatest antiwar film ever made ... It will be forever etched in the mind of any viewer” (James Monaco). B&W, 35mm. 133 mins.
www.universal100th.com
CLASSIC
UNIVERSAL HORROR TRIPLE BILL
THURSDAY, AUGUST 16 – 7:00 PM WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22 – 7:00 PM
The Mummy
NEW 35mm PRINT!
Dracula
USA 1931. Director: Tod Browning Cast: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan
Hyped as “the story of the strangest passion the world has ever known,” the Tod Browning-directed Dracula is one of the popular American cinema’s most enduring creations: “The film that started the 1930s horror cycle, secured Universal’s position as the horror studio, and made Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi a worldwide curiosity” (James Monaco). Lugosi’s iconic central performance has long since entered the collective pop consciousness; the actor was cast only after the unexpected death of Lon Chaney, the studio’s original choice. The film was based on a hugely popular stage play (by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston) adapted from Bram Stoker’s novel, rather than on the novel itself. Possessed of “a kind of macabre poetry” (Ivan Butler), Dracula has memorable flourishes galore - due in no small measure to the remarkable visuals of German Expressionist cinematographer Karl Freund (Metropolis), who later directed Universal’s The Mummy (also screening in this program). “One of those rare films that created its own myth ... Lugosi’s embodiment (there is no other word) of the terrible Count Dracula is so complete that the film still retains much of its power. His ominous ‘I am - Dracula’ has become perhaps the most famous phrase in the horror genre. The film was a great commercial success and still ranks as one of Universal’s biggest money makers” (Sadoul, Dictionary of Films). B&W, 35mm. 84 mins. FRIDAY, AUGUST 17 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, AUGUST 18 – 9:30 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 19 – 8:00 PM
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NEW 35mm PRINT!
Frankenstein
USA 1931. Director: James Whale Cast: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff, John Boles, Edward Van Sloan
“It’s alive! It’s alive!” Mary Shelley’s classic Gothic tale had been brought to the screen before, and would be many times again, but Universal’s creepy 1931 adaptation of Frankenstein is without doubt the enduring cinematic version. Colin Clive plays the titular mad genius, seeking to play God; Boris Karloff, giving a remarkably nuanced performance underneath Jack Pierce’s now-iconic makeup, is the misunderstood, misshapen monster, assembled from various cadavers and jolted to life in truly spectacular fashion. The film made Karloff a star; British expat James Whale, here making his first horror film, directs with great Expressionist flair. Whale would go on to make several other stylish movies in the genre, including Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. Universal planned Frankenstein as its follow-up to the sensationally, and surprisingly, popular Dracula; the curious prologue — a warning about the film’s frightening content — indicates that the studio was still less than certain about audiences’ tolerance for the macabre. “The film has a weird fairytale beauty not matched until Cocteau made Beauty and the Beast ... Karloff gives one of the great performances of all time” (Tom Milne, Time Out). B&W, 35mm. 71 mins. FRIDAY, AUGUST 17 – 8:00 PM SATURDAY, AUGUST 18 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 19 – 9:30 PM
USA 1932. Director: Karl Freund Cast: Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward Van Sloan, Arthur Byron
A year after serving as cinematographer on Tod Browning’s Dracula, the mega-hit that inaugurated Universal’s cycle of horror films, the great German Expressionist cameraman Karl Freund was hired to direct The Mummy. The film is based on an original script by John L. Balderston, whose writings contributed to both Dracula and Frankenstein. Boris Karloff, fresh off his star-making role in Frankenstein, has the lead role —and was billed on The Mummy’s posters as “Karloff the Uncanny”! The result was another enduring addition to the pantheon of Universal movie monsters. “Ten years after the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb created a stir around the world, Universal gratified public demand for all things Egypt with this chilling tale of a cursed mummy reanimated by an ancient spell. Karloff’s portrayal of Imhotep, the mouldering monster driven to possess the modern-day incarnation of his long-lost love, is as unforgettable as his bandaged visage” (UCLA Film and Television Archive). B&W, 35mm. 73 mins. FRIDAY, AUGUST 17 – 9:30 PM SATURDAY, AUGUST 18 – 8:00 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 19 – 6:30 PM
AUGUST 17-19 SPECIAL TRIPLE-BILL PRICE $ Adults $ Seniors & Students
16 14
Regular single and double bill prices otherwise in effect. Annual $3 membership required.
NEW 35mm PRINT!
NEW 35mm PRINT!
The Birds
Jaws
USA 1975. Director: Steven Spielberg Cast: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton
USA 1963. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette, Veronica Cartwright
Inglourious Basterds
USA/Germany 2009. Director: Quentin Tarantino Cast: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger
“Sweet revenge suffuses Quentin Tarantino’s astounding revisionist World War II epic, premiered at Cannes in 2009 as a co-production between the Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures. Tarantino offers his take on the subgenre of films that includes The Wild Bunch and Guns of Navarone, about groups of male vigilantes on dangerous missions, and adds an audacious genre twist: the badass avengers are a Jewish special forces unit. Assembled by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), they have a single mission: to infiltrate enemy territory and kill Nazis. The savagery and glee with which the so-called “Basterds” meet this challenge seems without precedent in WWII stories. Likewise, the story of Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a young French cinema owner whose Jewish family is wiped out by sadistic German officer Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, in an Oscarwinning performance). When Nazi leaders plan a selfcongratulatory event in Shosanna’s theatre, she plots a vengeful finale worthy of, well, Tarantino. The film was the director’s most popular and profitable to date, with worldwide grosses exceeding $320 million. Featuring a magnificent international cast and a free-wheeling mashup of genres and pop-cultural influences, Inglourious Basterds revels in the wealth of history, and film history, as reservoirs of narrative fantasy” (UCLA Film and Television Archive). Colour, 35mm, in English, German, French, and Italian with English Subtitles. 153 mins. THURSDAY, AUGUST 23 – 7:00 PM MONDAY, AUGUST 27 – 7:00 PM
Now these are Angry Birds! Alfred Hitchcock’s legendary doomsday fantasia is cinema’s greatest disaster movie, and one of the director’s finest works. Tippi Hedren, in her screen debut, plays Melanie, a smitten San Francisco socialite who pursues bachelor lawyer Mitch (Rod Taylor) back to his sleepy hometown of Bodega Bay — a pretty enough place, really, until our fine feathered friends start taking major ornithological offence at humankind. Based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier, The Birds was Hitchcock’s most elaborate technical undertaking; showcasing some 371 trick shots, the talents of renowned Disney animator Ub Iwerks, and an innovative electronic soundtrack, the movie is a tour-de-force of special effects technology. Art director Robert Boyle claimed that the visual design was inspired by Edvard Munch’s The Scream. The film was a screaming box-office success. “If Hitchcock had never made another motion picture in his life, The Birds would place him securely among the giants of the cinema” (Peter Bogdanovich). “Hitchcock at his best ... It’s fierce and Freudian as well as great cinematic fun” (Tom Milne, Time Out). Colour, 35mm. 120 mins.
The modern blockbuster starts here. Steven Spielberg’s exhilarating tale of a resort community terrorized by a great white shark was a blood-in-the-water game-changer: Jaws (along with George Lucas’s Star Wars two years later) sparked a feeding-frenzy of big-budget, mass-marketed, high-concept, high-stakes action/adventure event movies, now the very cornerstone of Hollywood’s business model. Based on Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel, Jaws is directed by the 28-year-old Spielberg with a deft, suggestive, Hitchcockian approach to suspense. Scheider, Shaw, and Dreyfuss are, respectively, the lawman, shark hunter, and marine biologist who join forces to battle the man-eating monster. The town’s cynical leadership, meanwhile, is most horrified by the fact the hungry shark is bad for business. Spielberg’s shark’s-eye camera makes sly play with viewer complicity; not since Hitchcock’s Psycho, which also messed with viewer voyeurism, has a film made moviegoers so afraid to get wet. Jaws became the highest grossing film of all time (Star Wars would surpass it) and made Spielberg both a household name and the most bankable of Hollywood commodities. John Williams’s famed score earned an Oscar, as did Verna Fields’s sensational editing. Colour, 35mm. 124 mins. FRIDAY, AUGUST 24 – 8:45 PM SATURDAY, AUGUST 25 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 26 – 8:45 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 24 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, AUGUST 25 – 8:50 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 26 – 6:30 PM
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CULT CINEMA CLASSICS TRIPLE BILLS
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break USA 1941. Director: Edward F. Cline Cast: W C. Fields, Gloria Jean, Leon Errol, Margaret Dumont, Susan Miller
The last of four films that W.C. Fields made for Universal is one wild, plot-defying ride: a freewheeling Hollywood spoof combining satire, slapstick, surrealism, and an insufferable singing moppet! Leonard Maltin calls it “completely insane”; Time Out insists it “has to be seen to be believed, an even then it probably won’t be.” Fields is at the peak of his legendary comic powers — and his legendary boozing — in what would be his last starring role (drink finally killed him in 1946). He plays an aging actor-screenwriter pitching his latest idea for a movie to Esoteric Studios. “The film quickly veers off into a comical alternate universe with side trips to a Russian colony in Mexico and a bizarre mountaintop retreat presided over by the man-eating Mrs. Hemogloben (Margaret Dumont) and her Great Dane... Fields’s legendary battles with the top brass at Universal were well documented ... The film is really a thinly disguised attack on the Hollywood studio system” (Turner Classic Movies). “A maelstrom of slapstick, song, blackout episodes, old gags, new gags, confusion. That much of it is truly comic is testimony to the fact that Fields is one of the funniest men on earth” (James Agee). B&W, 35mm. 71 mins. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, AUGUST 30 – 8:05 PM
Cobra Woman The Black Cat
USA 1934. Director: Edgar G. Ulmer Cast: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Julie Bishop, Andy Devine
Cherished by many as the finest Universal horror film of the 1930s, this fantastical fever dream set in a futuristic Bauhaus-style mansion was the first movie to pair Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. The film’s director, no slouch in the cult department himself, is Austrian expat Edgar G. Ulmer, whose Detour, a legendary low-budget noir from 1945, is often cited as the greatest B-movie ever made. The Black Cat’s plot has a honeymooning American couple trapped in the Hungarian mansion of a sinister architect and war profiteer (Karloff). The mansion is built on death-haunted ground; the architect’s nemesis is a vengeful psychiatrist (Lugosi) with a morbid fear of cats. “Like a monster from the id, director Ulmer’s morbid jewel—Universal’s top-grossing release of 1934—is a catalogue of public fascinations in the 1930s: Edgar Allan Poe (whose story ‘suggested’ the film); megastars Karloff and Lugosi (in their first of six Universal collaborations); modernist architecture; postwar trauma; psychiatry, pathology and the occult (personified in the tabloids by Aleister Crowley) ... The film’s plot is secondary to its astonishing visual design and increasingly shocking vortex of necrophilia, sadism, and torture” (UCLA Film and Television Archive). B&W, 35mm. 65 mins.
Ooh la la! Robert Siodmak is best known for directing some of Hollywood’s premier noirs of the 1940s, including Phantom Lady, The Killers, and Criss Cross, so this over-thetop exercise in kitsch adventure and eye-popping colour — a major favourite of several prominent avant-garde and cult directors, Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, and John Waters among them — comes as a surprise. Exotic beauty Maria Montez, known as “The Queen of Technicolor” for her roles in the 1940s, plays good-and-evil twin princesses battling for supremacy on a volcanic South Seas island. The local customs include snake worship and human sacrifice. The film’s cast include Jon Hall (romantically paired with Montez in several Universal adventure films), Sabu, Lon Chaney Jr., and a chimpanzee. Montez, clad in a silver lamé gown, performs a writhing, ritual cobra dance that is the stuff of camp movie legend (and a drag queen’s wet dream). Screenwriter Richard Brooks went on to adapt and direct Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, In Cold Blood, and Looking for Mr. Goodbar! “An insane piece of high camp ... Few phallic symbols go unexploited, and the gaudy Technicolor is a riot all by itself. Sarong optional” (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader). Colour, 35mm. 71 mins. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29 – 9:30 PM FRIDAY, AUGUST 31 – 8:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29 – 8:00 PM THURSDAY, AUGUST 30 – 9:30 PM FRIDAY, AUGUST 31 – 6:30 PM
AUGUST 29-31 SPECIAL TRIPLE-BILL PRICE $ Adults $ Seniors & Students
16 14
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CONTINUES IN SEPTEMBER! BLIND HUSBANDS (Erich von Stroheim, 1919) • THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (Rupert Julian, 1925) • DO THE RIGHT THING (Spike Lee, 1989) • TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (Robert Mulligan, 1962) • MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION (Douglas Sirk, 1954) • PILLOW TALK (Michael Gordon, 1959) • SHOW BOAT (James Whale, 1936) • IMITATION OF LIFE (John Stahl, 1934) • LITTLE MAN, WHAT NOW? (Frank Borzage, 1934) • WINCHESTER ’73 (Anthony Mann, 1950) • HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (Clint Eastwood, 1973) For complete program details and screening times, see our September/October 2012 Program Guide (available in August) or visit www.cinematheque.bc.ca
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USA 1944. Director: Robert Siodmak Cast: Maria Montez, Jon Hall, Sabu, Lon Chaney Jr., Mary Nash, Edward Barrier
The Incredible Shrinking Man USA 1957. Director: Jack Arnold Cast: Grant Williams, Randy Stuart, April Kent, Paul Langton, Raymond Bailey
Genre expert Jack Arnold (Creature from the Black Lagoon, It Came from Outer Space) directs one of the smartest, spiffiest sci-fi B-movies of the 1950s. “Not merely the best of Arnold’s classic sci-fi movies of the ‘50s, but one of the finest films ever made in that genre. It’s a simple enough story: after being contaminated by what may or may not be nuclear waste, Williams finds himself slowly but steadily shedding the pounds and inches until he reaches truly minuscule proportions. But it is what Richard Matheson’s script (adapted from his own novel) does with this basic material that makes the film so gripping and intelligent. At first, Williams is merely worried about his mysterious illness, but soon, towered over by his wife, he begins to feel humiliated, expressing his shame and impotence through cruel anger. And then his entire relationship with the universe changes, with cats, spiders and drops of water representing lethal threats in the surreal and endless landscape that is, in fact, his house’s cellar. And finally, to the strains of Joseph Gershenson’s impressive score, we arrive at the film’s philosophical core: a moving, strangely pantheist assertion of what it really means to be alive. A pulp masterpiece” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). B&W, 35mm. 81 mins. THURSDAY, AUGUST 30 – 6:30 PM FRIDAY, AUGUST 31 – 9:30 PM
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Tribute to Classic Indie Film 07.17
08.14
Jim Jarmusch’s classic prison break comedy now loaded with eclectic bonus features.
Wes Anderson’s candycoloured, Oscar-nominated family comedy on Blu-ray for the first time!
Down by Law
The Royal Tenenbaums
08.28 Teenage rebellion in 1960s London, based on music by The Who. Available for the first time through Criterion.
Quadrophenia p
07.24
Metropolitan
07.24
The Last Days of Disco
07.31
Le Havre
08.12
Rosetta
08.28
Lonesome
Available online
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